


Take a Bite

by Missy



Category: Hansel & Gretel - All Media Types, Hänsel und Gretel | Hansel and Gretel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Blood Magic, Dark, Gen, Magical Realism, Minor Character Death, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 03:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8430424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: A witch entices.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Healy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Healy/gifts).



The sugar has always been mine. 

My mother taught me its ways when I was a youth. How to temper it to survive any weather. How to form gingerbread into turrets and how to keep the beasts and birds at bay and prevent them from eating my wares. How to protect my land and fatten it with the sweet blood and flesh of the innocent. 

A fair trade for the candy I must feed them, to make their blood delicious – to make the land fertile and keep the house growing warm and sweet around us.

***

For a few scant months I am their mother – I with my orders and demands, my entreaty and sugar lumps. I cook great mountains of apples soaked in cinnamon and pies with flaky crusts; cookies make of chocolate and cakes frosted thick with butterscotch. I watch them grow rounder with pride – selfish pride, true, but real pride none the less. If they notice that my praise isn’t just simple pabulum that any sweet woman would pour into a feed trough, they do not make mention of it, eyes growing hazy as their bellies are finally satisfied. 

 

*** 

 

The house demands their energy, their joy – it repairs the cracks and mends windows, it keeps the candy abundantly stuck to the walls. Their hands chap chopping wood for me but their kindness, their sweetness – that is the true currency of their existence. 

And when the misery sets in – then that means it’s time to make another sacrifice.

 

*** 

The sugar has always been mine. The candy, the chocolate, the lollipops shining so bright in the sunlight –all of these have belonged to me, to my mother, to my grandmother before me.

After all I’ve said, don’t you feel hungry? Why don’t you come inside and have a small bite?

What’s the harm in indulging?


End file.
